Some people already submitted this news last week, but it wasn't until today that it became official: the FreeBSD team has announced the release of FreeBSD version 9.0. As you may expect from the major version number change, this is releas eis packed with new stuff.

Stop with the bs, the ONLY reason the BSD's didn't upgrade past 4.2.1 is because of the GPLv3 licence and as others have already stated this was because of companies supporting BSD having a 'no GPLv3 policy' (most likely due to the TIVO-ization clause).

Also this relates to what the BSD's ship with, all later GCC versions have been readily available through ports so those who have no problem with GPLv3 and wants to enjoy benefits of later versions like better optimization/faster compilation can get them.

It's not bs. GPLv3 is not acceptable for the base OS. I can't help it if you cannot accept that the project has requirements and actually sticks to the requirements. It also goes beyond just the license when
it comes to using and maintaining the compiler.

The base OS compiler is what counts the most. It's a concept that seems to be lost on Linux people.

GCC by itself not so much, binaries produced by GCC are not GPLv3 by virality, but everything -using- a GPLv3 or any "TiVo clause"-ized code on the FINAL device most allow the firmware to be tinkered with. So it is not much GCC by itself, but everything around it that make it much more complicated. That said, I have seen OpenBSD on embedded devices, but never FreeBSD. Most of them just use Linux.